A California man has been charged with murder in the deaths of his two children.
The FBI said Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, took his 2-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter to Rosarito, Mexico, from their Santa Barbara home and shot each of them in their chests with a spearfishing gun, The Associated Press reported.
An FBI agent said Coleman confessed to killing the children because “he believed his children were going to grow into monsters so he had to kill them,” court documents stated.
Coleman told FBI agents “he was enlightened by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories and was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife, A.C., possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children,” KABC reported.
>>Previous coverage: Surf school owner arrested in stabbing deaths of his 2 toddlers
He told the FBI that “he knew it was wrong, but it was the only course of action that would save the world,” KABC reported.
Coleman’s wife had called the police on Saturday after he left with the children, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release. She didn’t know where they were going and he didn’t answer her text messages.
She told the authorities she didn’t think her children were in danger with their father and that they didn’t have any problems in the family. She also told police the couple did not have an argument before he left.
She said she traced his phone to Rosarito on Sunday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Coleman and his children checked into a hotel in Rosarito on Saturday, but they left before sunrise on Monday, officials in Mexico said. He returned to the hotel later in the morning but eventually left.
The children’s bodies were found by a farmworker at a ranch near a Baja California town Monday.
Baja California prosecutor Hiram Sánchez Zamora said the 2-year-old had been stabbed 17 times and the 10-month-old 12 times, KABC reported.
An app on Coleman’s phone first pinged his location in Rosarito on Sunday, then it was tracked to an area near San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego Monday. He was at the checkpoint in the family van but without his children, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
He was detained at the border and that was when he told FBI agents what had happened, the AP reported.
Coleman, who founded the Lovewater Surf School in Santa Barbara, was charged federally with the foreign murder of U.S. nationals, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.